1. Field of Invention
The present invention relates to a method for flashing of a BIOS memory in a data processing system, and more particularly, to a method for remote flashing of a BIOS memory that is complied with various of operating systems, and manages to re-flash with BIOS flash failed.
2. Description of the Related Art
Generally speaking, in order to flash a data processing system, for example, BIOS flash for a computer, the flashing operation has to be performed under normally running Operating System. In the case when the Power On Self Test (POST) is not successfully passed or the Operating System is not normally operated, remote BIOS flash is not feasible.
Referring to FIG. 1, a schematic flow chart illustrating a method for flashing a computer BIOS according to prior art technology is depicted. When the BIOS flashing starts to work (step 110), the data processing system is booted first (step 102), and the Power On Self Test (POST) is subsequently performed (step 104). If the POST is successfully passed (step 101), the process moves to a step of “entering the Operating System (e.g. DOS, Microsoft Windows, Linux, etc.) (step 106). After the system has successfully entered the Operating System, if BIOS flash is requested by the remote console (step 103), a BIOS image file is transmitted firstly (step 108). Then, it is determined whether the BIOS image file is correct or not (step 105) and the BIOS is flashed by running a flash program (step 112). The system is rebooted after the flash operation is completed (step 114). If the BIOS image file is incorrect, a notification is sent to the remote console (step 116) and the process is terminated (step 120). On the other hand, if the remote user does not request to flash the BIOS, the process is terminated (step 120). Therefore, in the prior art, in case the BIOS flashing operation starts whereas the POST fails, the Operating System fails to work, meaning remote BIOS flash cannot be performed.
Regarding hardware configuration of the prior art technology, referring to the block diagram illustrating BIOS flash operation BIOS as shown in FIG. 5. In the diagram, a remote console 502 is used to send a message through an Ethernet 504 and a network interface card 506, wherein the message indicates that the remote console opts to flash the BIOS. A system processor 522 processes such message with the memory space configured in the system flash memory 524 and the system random access memory (RAM) 526 for flashing the system BIOS. According to a step of receiving a remote message to flash BIOS, the message between the data processing system and the network is transmitted through a channel provided by the system processor 522, thus BIOS can be successfully flashed only when the Operating System is normally operated. On the other hand, if the system suffers from power surge or some other reason that fails BIOS flash, the system processor 522 does not manage to reboot after BIOS flash failure, thus the remote console 502 is not able to perform BIOS flash via the network.